


This Is A Trainwreck

by markwatneyandensemble



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 12:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14284977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markwatneyandensemble/pseuds/markwatneyandensemble
Summary: yet another thing i dug up from ages ago





	This Is A Trainwreck

**Author's Note:**

> yet another thing i dug up from ages ago

A string of curses greeted Scully upon her arrival home. Nothing in the entryway appeared to be destroyed but from Mulder’s tone, something very clearly had gone wrong.

She followed the sound of destruction through the house, only to find her son, strapped to his high chair beneath the solitary dining room light, like a suspect being interrogated. He looked up at her silently, with eyes that shone proudly and a smile beneath the pacifier he was chewing like a toothpick.

Scully placed her hands on her hips and looked at the kid. As if the baby was going to answer with a complete, detailed recollection, she asked: “What did you do?“ 

"Oh so much, Scully,” Mulder, still unseen, called from the kitchen.

She moved to unstrap junior and carried him into the kitchen to find his father standing staring at plates of food with a grim look on his face. Immediately, Scully got a bad feeling about this.

“Don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me that something got burned. Or it’s too raw. Or you forgot about Matthew’s allergy. My family’s gonna be here in-”

“Thirty minutes, Scully. I know.” His voice was high and squeaky, and turned to her and began walking her through the apparent disaster like it was a crime scene.

“So, your son clearly knows exactly how cute he is, and wanted to use that to his advantage.” She gave him a confused, but impatient look. Nothing really appeared to be wrong- all of the food on the counter seemed edible, but that was when Mulder took a step back to reveal a birthday cake.

Or more specifically, a birthday cake with the imprint of a very recognizable, very chubby toddler face. They both took in the scene for a few seconds before Mulder turned back to Scully with a grim look on his face.

“This is a train wreck, Scully.”

“It’s not so bad.” She tried to sound convincing and simultaneously trying to suppress a laugh.

“Scully, we could make a lifelike bust of our son’s face with a mold like this… I mean, I don’t even know what happened. I set the cake down for one second and then turned to get the candles so it would be ready the second you got home, but he just took a nosedive right into it.”

She glanced back at the cake, and couldn’t contain the laughter any longer. Her mother and brother would be here any minute, yet there they stood, their son’s birthday cake crushed on the counter, and the residue from the blue letters still stuck in the kid’s hair.

When her laughter faded out, she shook her head and looked at the platter.

“Let’s just serve it like this. It’s not like he’ll remember it.”

“Scully, it’s the first  _normal_  birthday party he’s had and it’s a-”

“Trainwreck, yeah I know.” She glanced at her son, who was already clawing for the cake again. His face showed the stubborn determination his father had, and something in the back of Scully’s mind told her Teena had likely experienced something similar on a birthday of Mulder’s.

“But I don’t think he’ll mind a mashed cake,” Scully continued. “And honestly, Bill’s gotta complain about something, and there’s no way he’s gonna hold it against this adorable face.” The kid grinned at his mother’s praise with a smile that was almost smug.

It was true- William didn’t mind at all. After they made a unanimous decision to withhold the glittery candles in favor of just releasing the toddler onto the cake, and William gleefully destroyed it. Maggie had her camera and filmed him licking the icing, and grabbing handfuls of the cake and smearing it everywhere. He offered cake to Scully, held mashed in his tiny hand, which she declined. Sensing his son’s disappointment, Mulder swooped in and ate the cake graciously while Maggie and Scully watched in disgust.

Eventually, the cake monster fell asleep on his father’s lap, vanilla icing covering nearly his entire face, waking only when his parents tried to clean him up for bed.

Later that night, Mulder and Scully found themselves on their knees cleaning icing from a seemingly infinite number of cracks and crevices in their kitchen, and mutually agreed that their cake destroyer was the greatest thing that ever happened to them, and next year they’d get a restraining order for the cake. 


End file.
